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Pretty sure that "robotic Spider-Man" is canonically the Spider-Slayer.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:40 PM on November 25, 2023

The Wikipedia article has a clearer and more comprehensive list of personnel on the record. (I note that Michael McKean and Harry Shearer are on it as their Spinal Tap characters.) It's also interesting that they tried to avoid some of the mistakes of Band-Aid and USA For Africa.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:39 AM on November 24, 2023

What about the death of traditional media? It seemed like newspapers and magazines and to some extent TV and movies were big influencers and would decide what people should wear at that point in time.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:07 AM on November 24, 2023

“Addiction is a disease of loneliness” is very accurate, and is maybe the main reason why I go to AA meetings. Yes, having a program of self-improvement is good and important, but mostly it's to be able to tell other people about how much the disease sucks and that they understand because they've got it too.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:58 AM on November 24, 2023

They used to have diagonal breaking lines? Truly, our elders feasted like gods.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:41 PM on November 23, 2023

I would give the Pope 4 things:

A fifth thing: a copy of Priestdaddy.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:33 AM on November 23, 2023

A few points:

- There is this previous thread, which is still open.

- WRT the few surviving witnesses, this National Geographic documentary has interviews with most of the ones listed above, although not Marina Oswald (who AFAIK is no longer going by that name). I was going to do a FanFare thread about it, and if someone else wants to, that's fine. I wanted to share something that Buell Frazier, Oswald's coworker who drove him to work that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:38 AM on November 22, 2023

pepcorn, this picture, I'm guessing.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 4:11 PM on November 22, 2023

WRT musical versions of the event: "11 MPH (Abe Zapp Ruder Version)" by Was (Not Was).
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:06 PM on November 22, 2023

I kind of love that she had cards printed up that read, “Miss Bigley, Heiress to $15,000.” Like that was a thing that people did, no need to mince words, that's the selling point right there.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:55 AM on November 21, 2023

The sort of people who think a card that says "Heiress to $15,000" is credible or who don't bat an eye at your low-class signals.

This tracks. A while back, I read a story about someone who was walking around Duke University pretending to be a Rothschild. He'd carry a briefcase with a cellphone in it, back when cellphones were huge and relatively few people (particularly at a university) had one, like he might have to do financial stuff at… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:29 PM on November 21, 2023

Found this old WaPo article (ungated? seems so) listing more campus con artists. Lots of people reinvent themselves at college, some more so than others.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:44 PM on November 21, 2023

I kind of knew this already, but it's still amusing that my car looks like something that an F150 gave birth to.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:43 PM on November 20, 2023

You know what the worst thing is about what happened to the Library of Alexandria? That so many of my fellow librarians repeat the myth.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:35 PM on November 20, 2023

I am the fabled grasshopper (although a hard-working one) to your disciplined ant. I didn't quite ignore the onset of winter, but I thought it wouldn't be quite so soon nor quite so cold, and that was not entirely unjustified.

angiep, that is a beautiful and devastating statement of the situation, and one that I strongly identify with. I'm not in as drastic a situation as you, at the moment, but that could all change literally… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:30 PM on November 20, 2023

Mark me down as someone who has had some experience at retail and is absolutely behind self-checkouts. The "training" that I received was about 90% watching videos warning me of the dire consequences of trying to steal from the store by having my friends go through the checkout line with stuff that I would only pretend to scan, a scam that I had no idea people did before they told me exactly how it was done. The exceeding tedium of the job was only broken by young people insisting that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:02 AM on November 19, 2023

I don't understand how to bag my items at self checkout without getting yelled at by the machine and so instead of calmly placing an item in my reusable bag (the sensor gets mad if I put down my own bag because it thinks I stole an item?)

This is another problem that I've never had, possibly because my usual grocer of choice (Kroger) also sells reusable bags. It asks me if I've just put down a reusable bag and I say yeah and that's that. I think that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:21 PM on November 19, 2023

There's a filling station chain called FREEDOM that goes for the big flags; I dunno, maybe it attracts a certain sort of person, but most Americans are probably trained to look at exactly one thing at a filling station, and that's what they're charging for gas.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:39 AM on November 16, 2023

does Neil do this for hire

asking for a friend
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:27 AM on November 15, 2023

As an aspiring robosexual, I don't approve.

now, if you'll excuse me, I need to be fitted with a robust mouthguard so that I can, in fact, bite someone's shiny metal ass.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:07 PM on November 14, 2023

My particular incident of premature christmasulation was simply walking into a supermarket and seeing Xmas candy on display a couple of weeks ago... right next to the still-relevant Halloween candy. And it was largely the same candy--Reese's, M&Ms--just reshaped or recolored for Xmas. As if some people were already tired of Halloween and needed some red-and-green junk food toot sweet. They'll be getting into the Valentines candy before Xmas eve.

So... dogging, eh?… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 1:29 PM on November 13, 2023

I only said "strictly physical" because I knew people here would berate me if I used any type of "spiritual" language.

Who? If people are berating you for any reason, that would be something to take up with the mods, I think.

As for TFA, it's quite good, and gets to the real problem, which isn't really about spiritual practices or even being particularly wary of compulsive dopamine… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:59 PM on November 12, 2023

The Zoroastrian holy book Avesta, with its stress on physical cleanliness, lists voluntary masturbation among the unpardonable sins that one can commit.

They also list a punishment of a total of 1600 lashes for the sin of involuntary ejaculation, i.e. a wet dream. That's, y'know, not great.

And making the argument that "Tying "nofap" to Nazi is clickbait unless the word… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 1:00 PM on November 13, 2023

Less glib answer: here's Eve Sedgwick's 1991 paper Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good clitoris, must be in want of a Hitachi Magic Wand. "
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 1:08 PM on November 13, 2023

I mean, yeah, hindsight is probably better than 20/20; with a decently documented case, like this one, you can look at the known facts and go, yeah, he should have trusted people a bit less, maybe had a few less drinks at his parties, whatever. The PI who he hired said that he strongly resisted any suggestion that the good-time Charlies who he thought were his friends might have had something to do with the stuff that got swiped. But, pretty much by definition, the only… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:47 AM on November 12, 2023

One of the more damning revelations of the past few decades is that the Warren Commission very likely reached its lone-gunman verdict, or rather received it from on high, before it had begun its investigation. This conclusion emerged from later statements by the commissioners; from recordings of the phone calls of President Johnson, in which he made clear that it was of paramount importance to show that Oswald had no ties to either the Soviets or their Cuban allies, so as to avoid “a war that… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:29 PM on November 10, 2023

I seem to recall someone having the theory that Jackie was the intended target.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:17 PM on November 10, 2023

The bigger problem is that once you set off into the world of confidential information - whether later published, leaked, stolen, is that you never really know if you can rely on what you're seeing. Any of it could be faked, or selectively edited, or superseded by a later version. You're then essentially having to choose what you believe, which means this all becomes about competing faiths rather than anything more solid. And this is more than just the stoned undergraduate "how do… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:28 AM on November 11, 2023

OMG, what if we all killed Kennedy?

"I shouted out
'Who killed the Kennedys?'
When after all
It was you and me."
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:26 PM on November 11, 2023

Mixed feelings, which I'll bracket with the caveat that It Probably Wasn't Intended For Me. Lots of good posts on there, but I was a bit taken aback when they did a post on someone who had Charlie Sheen's contact info flirting with him in the midst of all his tiger blood bullshit. Plus, a lot of celebrity gossip-mongering, and, sometime after wozzisface bought the Gawker Media blogs, I noticed that a lot of posts were being made by someone with a traditionally masculine name. (In general, I… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:11 AM on November 10, 2023

the Cybertruck is a knockoff of the Cassette Futurism 80s design of the Aston Martin Bulldog

To me, it will always be "unused Battlezone enemy design".
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:10 AM on November 10, 2023

In the part of the essay in which cstross talks about the connections between futurism and fascism, my mind immediately went to Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream, a book-within-a-book set in an alternate reality in which Hitler, turfed out of Germany by the success of a communist revolution there, finds a welcome home writing SF in America; his magnum opus, Lord of the Swastika, is basically Mein Kampf in a postapocalyptic world, and… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:09 AM on November 10, 2023

I like this part, from early on:

Erewhon is a deadly earnest place. And yet. “The one thing I’ve done today,” said StraightioLab podcast host George Civeris upon landing in L.A., “is gone to Erewhon as a bit to get a $13 smoothie.” Erewhon does not participate in, but will knowingly profit from, the bit.

The thing about these GOOP-adjacent woo slingers is that, even if you're "just" engaging with them as a scornful/sarcastic bit on… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:57 AM on November 7, 2023

Clark sold it by talking about the "Streetfighter" a low cost high speed ship bought in numbers that would be networked together and able to swarm enemy fleets. SEXY!

This, and his quote about having a ship that could be piloted by R2-D2, gives me the sneaking and rather awful suspicion that Clark may have watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and been rather taken by the concept of the Defiant,… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:10 AM on November 6, 2023

It was both kind of schadenfreudalicious-fun and also just a twinge nerve-wracking in the last few days of the trial, since his approach (really, the approach of his whole defense team) seemed so counterproductive that some people were wondering if it was a crazy-like-a-fox gambit to convince at least one juror that SBF couldn't have managed a lemonade stand, let alone a years-long con that tossed billions around like so many bales of Monopoly money. The fact that he roped Michael Lewis into his… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 7:13 PM on November 2, 2023

When reading the article, I immediately thought of a situation at my previous job, in which someone in another department asked me to burn some CD-ROMs for him. (That gives you an idea of how long ago that was.) The material to be burned wasn't ready yet, so I asked him to let me know when it was, so that I could do the task. Time passed, and he asked where the CD-ROMs were... and was furious when I said, "You never let me know when to start." In his mind, he had… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:30 AM on November 2, 2023

TREK YEAH
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 5:26 PM on November 1, 2023

I love that AO illustration from the detective magazine, with the woman opening a box of chocolates and painstakingly shooting them up with whatever, because the kiddos won't bat an eye at getting unwrapped chocolates, no sirree.

As for me, I'm putting micro SD cards with crypto in them in the candy this year. With Sam Bankman-Fried's trial looking more and more like a no-hitter in the prosecution's favor, this may be the last year for that.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:42 PM on October 31, 2023

But was it a full-size Snickers?
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 12:44 PM on October 31, 2023

I mean, much earlier than that and you're in T2 territory which is JUST about as early as CGI is really truly being done in films.

And even then, a whole lot of the effects were practical, mostly for time and money reasons (then-primitive CGI ate a lot of both). They weren't putting the world's most bankable star and a 12-year-old boy in traffic for crazy stunts, even when it's obviously them and not their stunt doubles.

As… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:42 PM on October 30, 2023

Do people remember Zune?

Only because of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, I think, above and beyond oldsters like me who are still bemused by Microsoft's attempts to co-opt Apple's success with the iPod.

As for Albini, well, I still admire how he broke down how and why bands with standard record-company contracts would never make their advances back, but this part jumped out at me from TFA:… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 8:51 AM on October 30, 2023

My first one was Rush while they were on their Moving Pictures tour. I wasn't that big of a fan of the band, but some friends were, and we got to see them in the Rosemont Horizon (what is now called something dumb like Allstate Arena), which is a proper rawk arena. If I had to pick a favorite show, it would probably be one that I saw relatively recently: a show by Heilung that they played in Chicago right before the pandemic hit.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:48 AM on October 25, 2023

Embarrassing for them to put ham, of all the fucking things, above blue cheese. Also, there should have been a "nothing" entry for beef that's so good that it should be eaten alone.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 11:34 AM on October 23, 2023

Found a lot that I could relate to in this... maybe too much.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 11:30 AM on October 23, 2023

Some patient academic of the future will, on seeing “Transformers 2,” doubtless find patterns of local topical meaning—portents of the Arab Spring in the fight over the pyramids, evidence of the debate over the future of the automobile industry, and a hundred other things. But people just like violent otherworldly stuff, and give it a lot of non-allegorical license to do its thing.

What about Avengers: Endgame? Steve Rogers is… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 9:05 AM on October 23, 2023

Good dog.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:18 AM on October 23, 2023

Fifteen years I've been here? That seems weird. I'd originally gotten interested in the site before then, but that was during one of the times that sign-ups weren't available, and occasionally looking back at posts from earlier in the aughts, I'm not sure that I would have stuck around if I'd signed up earlier. I eventually did sign up, probably at just the right time for me, since a forum that I was involved with heavily for a while (itself composed of refugees from another… [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 6:18 AM on October 22, 2023

Pretty sure that sharks have to swim or die.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:49 AM on October 21, 2023

bonus Bowie: he also sings the theme song for Cat People (recycled for chilling effect in Inglourious Basterds), and in general Giorgio Moroder’s soundtrack for Cat People is great; he deserved an Oscar for it IMO.
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 10:44 AM on October 21, 2023

Related: The Riker Maneuver
posted to MetaFilter by Halloween Jack at 4:43 AM on October 20, 2023